Reminiscent of the rock and roll venue, The Family Dog
at the Great Highway, in San Francisco, a frequent venue for the Grateful Dead in
1969 and 1970. It was named for Highway 1, which runs through San Francisco.

However, this "Great Highway" seems unlikely to be the one referred to by the
protagonist of this song, as other geographical clues ("across the Bayou") seem to
indicated a Louisiana setting.

Since I got the itch to look through revisions of your Annotations in a slow day, on jury duty, waiting for
a pager to go off...
I was surprised to not see a link to the phrase "Balling the Jack," on your "Easy Wind" annotation. Aside from the delightful double entendres inherent in a Pigpen vocalization of those words and their relation to other forms of drilling, this is an old Dixieland song, though other roots sprout when one Google-izes...
Check out:
http://www.rienzihills.com/SING/ballinthejack.htm
for some words to a fox trot that is the predecessor of the jazz version of this song. And on that
page is a wonderfully Peter Max-ian treatment of black-and-red diamonds on the sheet music.
The link that follows here traces the dance and song's history and performances.
http://www.streetswing.com/histmain/z3balin.htm
Also on that link is a tie to the trainman's use of the word "ballin'".
Just some 411 on the 9/11,
Ken

How wonderful that there is a page like this to answer the questions that
plague us, like this one: in the song "I Know You Rider," who or what is
rider? Someone who herself is on a "Northbound Train" maybe?

Thanks - keep up the good work!

I replied to Kelley that this seems like a standard phrase meaning "main
squeeze", as Pigpen uses it in "Operator" [and "Easy Wind"]. She then replied:

> Thanks, David. I had forgotten about the rider reference in Operator. The
> main squeeze definition makes perfect sense. But how did it come to mean
> that? I'm going to start referring to my old boyfriend as my Ex-Rider.
>
> Appreciate your work -
>
> Kelley